Case Study: Muddy Machines

Muddy Machines

 

Combating labour scarcity in the farming industry

 

Recent valuation: 5x Britbots’ initial investment


 Muddy Machines builds robots to autonomously harvest select vegetables to reduce farmers’ reliance on unavailable labour.


Why we invested

 

The farming industry is plagued by labour shortages.


In 2021, the UK farming industry faced 500,000 unfilled vacancies. There was an additional 30% shortfall in the amount of seasonal labour required to adequately harvest crops.


This is a structural trend seen over much of the Western world, as hard, physical farm work loses its appeal. Shortages have been compounded in recent years by global restrictions in the movement of seasonal labour as a consequence of Covid with these felt particularly acutely in the UK because of further Brexit induced restrictions.


The result has not just been increases in input costs for farmers, but that crops are frequently left to rot in their fields unharvested because no labour can be found to harvest them.The adoption of autonomous machines – that is, machines which can carry out tasks intelligently, without the need to be directly controlled by humans - is a crucial part of combating all three of the global crises which Britbots’ investment thesis seek to combat:


No available labour: Unharvested cabbages left to rot


Against this backdrop, Muddy Machines are radically changing the farming landscape through lightweight, electric, autonomous harvesting robots to reduce farmers’ reliance on chronically uncertain labour supply as well as increasing crop yields by up to 20% through precision harvesting.


How they have been doing since we invested?


Since we invested in 2021, Muddy Machines have made fantastic progress building towards a first commercial deployment this year with a growing pipeline of interested customers. The team continues to build out the technical capabilities of its existing robot (such as pick speed), range of harvestable crops (initially asparagus, with other fine vegetables such as courgettes and tenderstem broccoli soon to be added) and geographical footprint (initially the UK, now North America).


The Company recently raised an investment round at a 5x valuation uplift to Britbots’ initial investment, has secured over £2.5m of non-dilutive grant funding over the last 12 months and was accepted as one of the top 1% of applicants onto the prestigious Thrive Agtech accelerator.


Automated harvesting: Muddy Machine’s first robot, the “MK Sprout”

Looking ahead


The structural tailwinds behind Muddy Machines value proposition (combating labour shortage and reducing food waste) continue to increase and have been intensified by a new emphasis on need for domestic food supply self-sufficiency a result of the Ukraine conflict.


We believe Muddy Machines is building a market leading technology and the team and will be able capitalise on the inevitable shift toward automation in the farming industry which will occur over the next decade.

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